Violence works.

That’s the message received loud and clear by an on-campus Republican group at U.C. Berkeley when the university canceled an event featuring right-wing speaker Ann Coulter.

Some have even characterized the cancellation as a warning.

So much for the campus that was hailed as the cradle of the free speech movement in America.

Perhaps that moniker should be modified to read “free left-wing speech,” since that seems to be the only group that enjoys that constitutionally mandated freedom on campus.

You know, those folks who maintain that terrorism is just frustration felt by poor people because they don’t have a job or because they feel ostracized by normal societies that object to it when they lop off people’s heads and surgically remove parts of little girl’s genitalia.

The people that love to quote statistics, yet avoid the ones that tell a story that contradicts the meme that racism and street violence is only perpetrated by white people.

Those folks who champion free speech, as long as it’s their speech and prohibit it for everyone else.

Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopoulos and others on the very far right are assuredly not everyone’s cup of tea. Indeed, to many, and maybe even most normal people they sound as unhinged as their counterparts on the left.

That doesn’t mean they should be muzzled, as long as they don’t themselves advocate for violence.

Believe it or not, the best way to counter political extremism is to allow people to see and hear it and make up their own minds, assuming they still have minds.

In a way you really can’t blame Berkeley administrators for seeking to avoid uncomfortable headlines and expensive property damage. Perhaps there is even a genuine fear for public safety, particularly if it’s their safety.

As the black-garbed professional muscle that shows up at virtually every protest are increasingly being met with people willing and able to fight back, it’s not unlikely someone could either be seriously injured or die at one of these rallies/protests/mobs soon.

After decades of nurturing the creation of safe spaces to allow some, but only some students to feel safe while they parrot liberal platitudes, and creating a couple of generations of cream puffs or as conservatives call them, snowflakes, colleges are reaping a bitter harvest of flames and property damage.

Of course the obvious answer would be a strong law enforcement presence, unfettered by political correctness.

Yeah. Fat chance of that, since the last five years have been spent in rendering the police impotent.

Instead, what you have is de facto censorship through threats of violence.

Let’s see, isn’t that what Maduro is doing in Venezuela? Or ISIS in the Middle East?

Seen through that lens, perhaps Ms. Coulter doesn’t sound so far out after all.

Copyright Notice

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rebecca L. Baisch and Musings From Street Level with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.